Joe Did What? Trafalgar Edition

The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805 by Clarkson Frederick Stanfield, via Wikipedia.

 Well, I guess this certainly does change everything, and that's refreshing. 

I'm going to stay angry for a long time at The Times and Politico and other big media and the "liberal" tech billionaires for the dishonest backdoor trick they pulled, when they couldn't succeed in turning the public against Biden and shifted instead to convincing us that we had turned against Biden by ourselves, or rather that our neighbors had, through the bogus "age issue", warning us not that Biden was a bad president, but that he'd lose because other people thought he was too old, and our punishment for supporting Biden would be another Trump term (on the basis of a polling model that has consistently failed by underestimating the Democratic vote for six years now). They recognized our deep fear of the consequences of another Trump term and exploited it, in a way that actually made Trump's reelection more likely, using the debate disaster as evidence of a permanent degeneration (which it obviously wasn't—Biden had never showed up in that condition before and never has since). It was irresponsible and disgusting.

I'm not too angry with the congressional party leaders, or the "centrist" representatives in their precarious suburban seats, or even the bedwetter commentariat. The fear is real, and it's justified. What could be lost in another four years of Trumpery is almost incalculable; I'm thinking especially of the backsliding in the elimination of fossil fuels, but the "deconstruction of the administrative state" as prefigured in the Project 2025 document turns the entire civil service into an easily corrupted tool for tearing down regulations, and reduces the Justice Department into the president's personal police agency. It really is the end of the republic, alongside plans for a federal ban on abortion, vigilante takeovers of school libraries, the insane powers for evil conceded to the presidency by the Supreme Court even as it strips the office of its power to do good. The thing is, fear is a lousy counselor, and their Fantasy Politics League plan to get rid of Biden by obliterating the primary results with some kind of pantomime competition, before or during the Democratic convention, as somebody leaked the plan to the abominable Mark Halperin (now working for Newsmax), was a terrible, senseless plan that would have flung us into even worse uncertainty than we already had. Don't panic.

I'm certainly not angry at Biden for making the decision. Far from it! Remember that (as @nycsouthpaw just pointed out) there are two parts to what he did: stepping down from the campaign, and giving his endorsement to Vice President Harris. The first was the thing he was being pressured to do by the congressional party leadership, the timorous representatives from Nassau County and North Jersey and the Hudson Valley, the readers of Friedman and Brooks and Ezra Klein, and so on; the second was the thing those people absolutely didn't intend for him to do, spoiling the open convention plan. He was not supposed to endorse Harris.

So it was one of those audacious, perfectly timed Biden moves that looks like a gaffe (the most famous example would be the one during his vice presidency that made marriage equality a federal reality) and changes the whole situation. Harris quickly announced her candidacy (to "earn and win" the nomination, she said, carefully), all the other conceivable candidates endorsed her too, and the campaign had raised $50 million from small donors ($100 million after 24 hours, suck on that, billionaires). Like one-eyed, one-armed Nelson at Trafalgar—I'm not kidding, folks!—the 81-year-old Biden had sacrificed his own (political) life, but had won the battle, for his legacy of a better, more free and equal America.

At least I hope so. A battle, of course, not the war. Anyway, it seems clear that Democrats are in a much better position than they were a couple of days ago, with a unity in the party we've seen nothing like in years, pro-Biden and anti-Biden voices embracing in the social media. Of 263 Democratic congressmembers and 23 governors, the Washington Post tally 24 hours after the announcements has 243 who have endorsed Harris and 43 who haven't (non-endorsers include convicted felon Robert Menendez and the federally indicted Henry Cuellar, but the New York and New Jersey centrists I've been watching the most have endorsed, except for that freak Tom Suozzi, and so, I'm glad to report, has Speaker Emerita Pelosi). There are no alternative candidates except Marianne Williamson (old Joe Manchin sent out feelers, but was roundly rebuffed). As of this afternoon convention delegations from ten states—Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and Wisconsin, plus Guam, had pledged support to Harris, for a total of 770 delegates out of the needed 1,986.

Meanwhile the Trump campaign, now led (with Biden's withdrawal) by the oldest and unquestioned most cognitively disabled presidential candidate in history, is having to completely reconfigure its tactics. They are running ads complaining that Vice President Harris laughs too much and that she's opposed to plastic drinking straws. Their vice presidential candidate "JD" Vance looks like a feeble impostor and baffles his audiences with his complaints.

Republicans have been trying to characterize the surge of support for Harris as some kind of coup attempt against Biden, as if Biden hadn't sparked himself it with his bold move, and as undemocratic, which is somewhat ironic—

One of the most gratifying aspects of the excitement is the way the discussion of Biden's age has given way to the discussion of his accomplishments from all quarters:

I'll be getting to that, no doubt, but in the meantime check out this magisterial survey , "Why Biden Outclasses Every American President Since FDR," by Nathan Newman. 

Oh, and maybe one of his most surprising accomplishments will be the election of the nation's first Black woman president.